Monday, August 27, 2012

The Silver 2013 Lunar Snake designs from Royal Canadian Mint can be seen below:

2013 Lunar Snake Designs from Royal Canadian Mint (Silver)

The design on the left (round) will come in a one ounce silver proof version with a maximum mintage of 28,888 coins (CAD$98.88), as well as a half ounce silver specimen version with a higher mintage of 88,888 coins (CAD$39.95).

The design on the right (lotus shaped coin) weighs 26.7g (.858oz ASW) with a diameter of 38mm. The maximum mintage is 28,888 coins (CAD$98.88).

A Gold design will also be available:

2013 Lunar Snake Designs from Royal Canadian Mint (Silver)

Two different 2013 Year of the Snake Gold Coins will be released. The pictured coin is the 1/10oz gold coin (specimen finish) which will have a maximum mintage of 18,888 coins (CAD$229.95) and a proof version featuring the same design will also available. The proof will be struck in 18 karat gold (75% gold / 25% silver) weighing 11.84g and will have a maximum mintage of 2,500 coins (CAD$688.88).

Orders will open to the general public from the 28th of August, with orders already currently open for Master's Club Members. The Royal Canadian Mint website: http://www.mint.ca/

The Royal Canadian Mint produced a series of Lunar coins over 1998 to 2008. The series was designed by Harvey Chan. They were made from Sterling Silver and each weighed 34g, thus contained over an ounce of pure silver (ASW). The central lunar figure cameo is plated with 0.2 grammes of 24k gold. The below is the 2001 Lunar release from the Royal Canadian Mint:

2001 Lunar Snake Design from Royal Canadian Mint

My personal preference of all the above Lunar Snake coins from the Royal Canadian Mint is the new 2013 Lotus design, what a stunning coin! Will be great to see some photos of these in real life.

[Edit] Thanks to a reader from Numyx.com for providing this real life photo of one of the round Silver Lunar Snake's from Royal Canadian Mint:

For previous coverage you may want to checkout these other recent posts on the forthcoming 2013 Lunar Snake releases:

3
comments:

I like the RCM's snakes, but I have a slight preference for Perth's silver snakes, even over the nifty lotus variant.

You might also be interested to know that some major USA dealers such as APMEX have begun accepting pre-orders for the snakes today. Interestingly, they've excluded the one ounce snakes from the pre-sales. Every other size except the 10 kilo seems to be available, though.

I'm finding it hard to decide whether I prefer the Silver Lunar Snake from Perth Mint or the Lotus Design from Royal Canadian Mint... no doubt I will end up with a few of the Perth Mint coins, can't really justify the cost of proof coins, unless there is a good opportunity to flip for a profit.

Will be very interesting to see what European and US dealers list the 1oz bullion coins for. Most Australian dealers have been offering them for around the $42-45 mark, except Gold Stackers bucked the trend and offered up their allocation for spot (but limited to 1 coin per customer).

Baron, I've been expecting to see the coins listed around $75-$90 in the US, at least initially, because I think the performance of the dragons will somewhat set the tone for this year's releases. I'll be watching the performance of the bullion coins very closely, as I think the initial sales of them will set the tone for the rest of the series.